Chinese people burned offerings for their ancestors during the Qingming Festival on April 1.

The Qingming Festival is the most important ancestor worship festival in China and falls on the 15th day after the Lunar Spring Equinox.

Qingming Festival is traditionally an important day of sacrifice for Asians around the world to go and sweep tombs and commemorate their ancestors.  It is the most important ancestor worship festival in China and falls on the 15th day after the Lunar Spring Equinox.

In this video the filmer’s family gave offerings early at this mausoleum in Shijiazhuang to avoid the anticipated massive crowds on April 4th.
In modern Chinese cities, family members get together and visit the mausoleum holding the ashes of their relatives, where they burn ritual offerings of joss paper, paper money, and printed pictures of cars, houses, and other material objects, in a community furnace. Fresh flowers are ceremonially placed at the designated offering spot. If people can’t return to where the ancestor’s ashes are interned, then they make the sacrifice at a road intersection. Street intersections are popular spots, as people believe the spirits may be lost and not know which way to turn


Ancestral worship is an amalgamation of Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist religious practice based on the belief that deceased family members have a continued existence, take an interest in the affairs of the world, and possess the ability to influence the fortune of the living. Spirit money and objects are used as a symbol giving the ancestors what they need to increase the quality of their existence. By burning the money and objects, the deceased can use them as a payment for spiritual debts.
The living person attempts to pay off this mystical and celestial debt by praying and making symbolic monetary donations to their ancestors.
Ancestor worshipping is not asking for favours, but to fulfil one’s filial duties. The act is a way to respect, honour and look after ancestors in their afterlives while keeping the ghosts at bay and guaranteeing the ancestors’ well- being and positive disposition.